Inactive accounts
Because this needs to have a wider audience: LJ are planning on purging inactive accounts and communities. "A journal is defined as inactive if it has not been logged into for 24 consecutive months. A community is defined as inactive if has not been updated for 24 consecutive months. Once an account is eligible to be purged for inactivity, the owner will be sent an email to alert them of the inactive status. The owner will then have two weeks to log into the journal or post to their community to prevent it from being deleted. If the owner does not log in or post, the account will be deleted and treated like any other deleted account (the owner will have 30 days to log in and undelete the account to prevent it from being purged). Purging inactive accounts will take place sometime after we've begun purging suspended accounts, probably in late August." Note that, according to this post, the deletion would include "comments and community entries posted by accounts being purged."
This is a remarkably shitty idea, and not only because LJ had long promised not to delete any journals that had content in them. Think about comms set up for specific events that are now no longer active, but still valuable resources for people to refer to for info about those events, or to see about how people were feeling at that point in time. Think about now-defunct fests/exchanges/challenges/rp games that produced stories and art that people still like to look back at, years after the fact. Think about talented writers and artists who posted their content, then moved on. Think about all the links to other people's posts that could go dead in your own journal and Memories, the discussion threads in comments that would be gutted if some participants disappeared. Think about the journals of dead LJers whose friends and family don't know that they can apply for memorial status. Hell, just think about people who've lost the passwords/emails attached to old journals and can't prove any longer that it's their content.
I'm not quite willing to go so far as to call this equivalent to book-burning, but it's certainly a poor decision just to free up some usernames. There are plenty of "inactive" journals and comms I would miss if they disappeared. And while I can back up my own RP journals, or transfer them to another journal service, I can't do that for those that aren't mine, or for comms I don't moderate.
Fortunately it seems in this thread that they are also still considering other options, including only purging inactive journals/comms that have only "one or two" posts. So if you feel (as I do) that this is a bad decision, please go there and make your voice heard, and maybe they'll change their mind.
ETA: They have now modified their definition of 'inactive' as follows: "A journal is defined as inactive if it has not been logged into for 24 consecutive months and has only one post (i.e., the welcome post). A community is defined as inactive if has not been updated for 24 consecutive months and has only one entry and no comments. Still no word on journals that only comment/post to communities, but it's an improvement...
This is a remarkably shitty idea, and not only because LJ had long promised not to delete any journals that had content in them. Think about comms set up for specific events that are now no longer active, but still valuable resources for people to refer to for info about those events, or to see about how people were feeling at that point in time. Think about now-defunct fests/exchanges/challenges/rp games that produced stories and art that people still like to look back at, years after the fact. Think about talented writers and artists who posted their content, then moved on. Think about all the links to other people's posts that could go dead in your own journal and Memories, the discussion threads in comments that would be gutted if some participants disappeared. Think about the journals of dead LJers whose friends and family don't know that they can apply for memorial status. Hell, just think about people who've lost the passwords/emails attached to old journals and can't prove any longer that it's their content.
I'm not quite willing to go so far as to call this equivalent to book-burning, but it's certainly a poor decision just to free up some usernames. There are plenty of "inactive" journals and comms I would miss if they disappeared. And while I can back up my own RP journals, or transfer them to another journal service, I can't do that for those that aren't mine, or for comms I don't moderate.
Fortunately it seems in this thread that they are also still considering other options, including only purging inactive journals/comms that have only "one or two" posts. So if you feel (as I do) that this is a bad decision, please go there and make your voice heard, and maybe they'll change their mind.
ETA: They have now modified their definition of 'inactive' as follows: "A journal is defined as inactive if it has not been logged into for 24 consecutive months and has only one post (i.e., the welcome post). A community is defined as inactive if has not been updated for 24 consecutive months and has only one entry and no comments. Still no word on journals that only comment/post to communities, but it's an improvement...